The 9513 - Country Music Blog

• George Strait and Reba McEntire are going on tour together.
• String Theory Media’s Craig Havighurst highlighted a NPR feature that argues that charts might be measuring the wrong thing, and because of that, they mean less today than they did in the past.
  

  They’ve always been something of an illusion, a contrivance meant to serve the needs of an industry interested in getting us to consume a lot of just a few artists rather than ranging across the new and the old for a fulfilling listening life. Before SoundScan, the system methodically and negligently under-represented country and hip-hop. And SoundScan has been far from perfect. The whole Hit Parade concept has gone on to suffuse other industries such that who’s on top, who had the biggest share or the biggest opening weekend has defined most of our public dialogue about our culture’s art. And that’s just a sorry place to be.

• New releases for the week of November 3, 2009 include:

  • Alan Jackson – Songs of Love and Heartache
    Cracker Barrel

  • Carrie Underwood – Play On
    Amazon | iTunes | MySpace

  • The Dixie Bee-Liners – Susanville
    Amazon | iTunes | MySpace

  • Hank Williams – Revealed: The Unreleased Recordings
    Amazon

• Billy Deaton, a longtime booking agent for artists like Faron Young, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and more, passed away on Saturday.
• Juli Thanki covered the Patty Loveless concert at the Birchmere on Sunday:
  

  Though Loveless was in good spirits, teasing her band members and joking with audience members, two somber moments punctuated the evening. Loveless, a coalminer’s daughter (her father died of black lung), brought the crowd to their feet with her stunning bluegrass version of “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” dedicated to her late parents, who had “the best seat in the house.” She also dedicated “Too Many Memories” to the late Stephen Bruton, fighting tears as she ended the song with a sincere “Thank you, Stephen.”

• Craig Shelburne never realized it until listening to the new Dolly Parton box set, Dolly, but he says she’s a bit morbid.
• Country California fake news: MuzikMafia announces cutbacks.
• Peep’s Joey Guerra was disappointed with the new Carrie Underwood album:
  

  Maybe Underwood isn’t interested in truly spreading her musical wings. And maybe fans don’t care if she ever leaves her ice castle. But with so much vocal talent, Play On’s underwhelming tunes put Underwood’s potential on pause.

• USA Today gave the record three out of four stars:
  

  This is how to build a career for the long run. On her third outing, the still-blossoming Idol alum with the sterling pipes invites a diverse handful of outsiders to join her proven Nashville-based songwriting/production team. They expand her sound and worldview just enough to perhaps lure more folks to the party while satisfying country radio programmers and her loyalists.

• Rosanne Cash earned four stars from American Songwriter’s Holly Gleason for her album The List.
• Cracker Barrel released a new Alan Jackson compilation yesterday. Titled Songs of Love and Heartache, the collection features 10 of Jackson’s hits along with a couple of unreleased tracks: “That’s What I’d Be Like Without You” was originally recorded for his 2004 disc What I Do and “Nothing Sure Looked Good on You” is a Gene Watson cover.
• Watch the premiere of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” from her Live From London DVD.
• A new survey commissioned by the Country Music Association, called the CMA Prime Prospect Study, concluded that country consumers are feeling the effects of the economic downturn and have reduced spending in the last year
• George Jones still doesn’t like what passes as country music these days.
• Carrie Underwood hates the term pop-country, instead preferring to describe such music as contemporary.
• Toby Keith touches on booger-eatin’ nerds, national healthcare, and illegal immigration in an interview with CNN.
• Today is the last day to win a Drew Kennedy house concert; check his website for details!

Founded in the mid-90s in Ogden, Utah, Ryan Shupe and The Rubberband hope to be a two-hit radio wonder.

Comprised of Shupe (fiddle, guitar, ukulele, lead vocals), Roger Archibald (guitar, vocals), Ryan Tilby (bass guitar, vocals), Craig Miner (banjo, bouzouki, mandolin, guitar, vocals), and Bart Olson (drums), the band’s music has been described as “a breathtaking blast of manic musical virtuosity.” It certainly is an eclectic mix of several acoustic musical genres, leaning heaviest on country and bluegrass.

When asked about how he describes his music, Shupe gets appropriately analytical: “It probably depends on who I’m talking to. When we look back at when we were answering that question when we were doing our big radio promotion tours, the best answer would have been the funniest answer: ‘We are the biggest country band–no one else sounds like we do so therefore no one in the country is more country.’ But the truth is labels are hard with us. What’s bluegrass? Sure, we have a banjo and a fiddle in our group, but are we bluegrass? No. It’s kind of bluegrassy, but at a bluegrass festival, they’d say, “no way.” We kind of sit somewhere between country, bluegrass, Dave Matthews Band, Barenaked Ladies with some humor mixed in the middle. When I describe my music to someone who has never heard of us, I use names like that because they know what I’m talking about. It’s an acoustic jam rock of bluegrass country.”

Then

After learning to play the fiddle at the tender age of five (in doing so, becoming a fifth generation family player), Shupe started his first band at ten and played in a variety of different bands in his teens and during college. Only one common theme ran throughout each group–they each came to an end when the broke up. From there, the concept of the Rubberband was born. “I decided that I was going to make a band that didn’t break up,” he recalls. The idea would be that the Rubberband would be elastic. That’s the best way to make a band not break-up.”

As Shupe began to shape his musical sound following college, he made friends throughout the community with the best musicians he could find. On gig nights, he brought in the players he needed depending on the venue and the crowd. On some nights, there could be two on stage or as many as five. And then one night, magic happened and the membership became permanent.

“I’m a band guy,” says Shupe. “I’m a big band fan. I like bands. Anyone that plays music knows the difference between a band and a hired gun situation. With a band, you get a cohesiveness that you don’t find any other way. And I’m not saying the other way is bad. I wouldn’t downplay how other artists play music. It’s just different. Anyone who has been in a band knows the moment it becomes a brotherhood. You look at a guy and just know what he’s going to do. There’s that moment when you just gel.”

They were producing a sound that was certainly unique to the band.

“Basically, in a nutshell, it’s acoustic instruments pushed to the limits of what they should be able to do. We do stuff more up-tempo than what people are used to. It is fiddle, guitar, drums, banjo and bass, but it’s got an almost punk beat to it. We love experimenting with different sounds.”

After signing with Capitol Records in 2005, the band released its debut major-label album, Dream Big, which produced a Top 25 hit on the Billboard Hot Country chart with the title track. The song was also picked as the theme song for NBC’s prime-time show “Three Wishes,” hosted by Amy Grant. Dream Big also featured a second release, “Banjo Boy” that failed to chart but did have a music video that was in heavy rotation on CMT.

“I would describe the Dream Big album as good music with a positive theme running through it,” says Shupe. “It’s got something for everyone. I know that’s a generic answer, but in this case, it applies. It’s got love songs, up songs and down songs. It has a theme that’s acoustic based and is music with a positive outlook. We experimented with some rapping-like lyrics on some songs. It has a lot of different elements like that.”

“That was a fun time. We enjoyed the ride–literally. We got to ride around in a big bus. We got to walk the red carpet. It was nice to see that side of things for awhile. We played nearly every festival alongside a lot of great acts and other great musicians. It’s kind of like everything you can imagine. You just show up and they’ve bought you lots of clothes. We got to travel all over the country, flying tons. For a while there, we were doing everything we could imagine.”

Continue Reading…

Songwriters: Christopher DuBois & Ashley Gorley.

Exactly one year ago, Lee Ann Womack released a collection of whiskey-and-heartbreak laced neo-traditional country music that included songs about bars, dying relationships and domestic abuse. That collection, titled Call Me Crazy, was masterfully sung, beautifully recorded, splendidly arranged, wonderfully written, and, of course, a complete commercial failure.

Maybe a major label country artist who chooses to record and release an album comprised of mostly down-beat (mostly traditional) country music deserves to be called crazy. It was, after all, a miracle that “Last Call” managed to wiggle its way to hit status (thanks for that hook, Johnnie Walker Red), and there was scant hope for anything else from the disc to find a home alongside Jimmy Wayne and Billy Currington.

Fortunately, Nashville is a town where a songwriter is always waiting in the wings with a musical Prozac, and Womack’s new single (from an as-yet undefined project) is proof positive that the medicine works; Womack’s syrupy delivery is more than a few personalities removed from the sultry and smoky vocals on Call Me Crazy, with her rendering of this song’s idyllic world layered in pastel rather than neon.

In fact, if “There Is A God” was any more warm and fuzzy, it would be a bunny. A big, fat Easter Bunny with a basket full of clichés instead of candy.

“There Is A God” amounts to a slideshow of inspirational lifescapes—from running horses to flocking birds to sprouting seeds—all of which are offered as proof that “there is a God.” Of course, there are some fireflies, some babies and some abating cancer thrown into to mix…what inspirational country song would be complete without that trifecta?

Country music has a long history of incorporating Christian and gospel themes into both its mainstream and its ancillary branches, and even some of the genre’s most hardened outlaws have turned their musical eyes towards heaven. Here, however, Womack offers what is less a profession or discussion of faith and more a rejection of reason and logic. After going through a laundry-list of beautiful things (like a raindrop falling onto your tongue), the songs asks, “how much proof do you need,” eventually winding into the bridge and, thus, the pervading theme that binds all of these disjointed lyrics together: “Science says it’s all just circumstance/Like this whole world’s just an accident/If you wanna shoot that theory down/Just look around.”

While the overriding message of the song is that we can see God’s existence in everything around us, the writing errs when it ventures into a debate about the merits of logic and science (and the relation of those things to spirituality). The proclamation that “there is a God” does not need to also undermine and misrepresent what are almost universally accepted explanations for various scientific processes, and the fact that the song is willing to attack science makes the lyric come off as more political than it needs to.

After all, there’s a pretty famous song that makes essentially the same points without going down that road:

Everytime I hear a new born baby cry,
Or touch a leaf, or see the sky
Then I know why I believe

That song, “I Believe,” is a personal, specific declaration of faith. “There Is A God” is a pandering declaration of ideology masquerading as abstract inspirationalism–and a disappointing entry from a woman who has produced some of the most compelling country music of her generation.

Listen: Lee Ann Womack – “There Is A God”

• In an interview with American Songwriter’s Lynne Margolis, Lyle Lovett commented on the possibility of recording with Joe Ely, Guy Clark, and John Hiatt.
  

  We have recorded. It’s mired in the record deal. We recorded three nights in Redwood City, California, a couple of years ago and it’s all ready to go, if we could get the business end of it [together]. … I’m hopeful that we can eventually put it out.

• Watch the new video for the Toby Keith song “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song).”
• The New York Times‘ Jon Caramanica on the new Carrie Underwood album Play On:
  

  [...] Ms. Underwood has honed a series of familiar poses — faithful girlfriend, scorned girlfriend, all-American girlfriend — each as technically well executed as the last. She’s a great model — the best in all of country, and perhaps all of pop. Certainly that’s made many of her songs, including several on “Play On,” musically and emotionally complacent, testaments to the limitations of great structure. “Look at Me” smolders but never sizzles, and “Undo It” never fills in the gaps between bruising choruses.

• Joe Nichols discussed his new album and the song “An Old Friend of Mine” in an interview with CMT Insider.
• Shirley Jinkins reviewed Billy Joe Shaver’s Saturday concert where he opened with a new song, “It’s Always Been That Way (Since the Get-Go).” Watch a performance of the song on YouTube.
• For episode 25 of Nashville At Nite host Carrie Smith interviewed members of the band KingBilly.
• Country Universe’s Kevin J. Coyne wrapped up his countdown of the worst singles of the decade with “Part 4: #20-#11” and “Part 5: #10-#1.”
• Ellen DeGeneres skeered Taylor Swift purdy good.
• Juli Thanki covered Thursday’s Ricky Skaggs concert:
  

  Bill Monroe has passed on, but Skaggs invoked his spirit throughout the night, covering a block of Monroe songs from the late ’40s and relating one choice piece of advice the master gave him: “You gotta whip that mandolin like a mule.” Seems like Skaggs took it to heart, not only with the mandolin, but guitar and banjo as well.

• Lyle Lovett came out on top in this week’s batch of album reviews from Country Weekly’s Chris Neal with four stars for his album Natural Forces.
• Pierre Cabrol, the architect who designed the Grand Ole Opry House, passed away at the age of 84. (via That Nashville Sound)
• Patty Loveless on her latest album, Mountain Soul II:
  

  “This one’s a little different than the first Mountain Soul,” Loveless said. “I bucked and kicked a little at calling it Mountain Soul II, but I understood what the record label (Saguaro Road Records) was trying to do, which was to inform fans a little about what the content is. But I wanted to hear steel and electric guitar, and blend things and make it sound more Americana than Mountain Soul was.”

• Kelly Dearmore asked Drew Kennedy to discuss two of the songs from his new album, An Audio Guide to Cross Country Travel.
  

  “Sharon Springs” is a song that I wrote about a couple of people that I know, people that shoot themselves in the foot every time something good comes their way. I think everyone knows someone like that. You can do everything you can think of to help them out, but sooner or later you come to grips with the notion that it’s just a part of who they are. They don’t know how to move forward unless they break-down whatever it is that’s right in front of them. It’s not an easy process to watch, that much I know for sure.

  Head over to The Gobblers Knob to see what he has to say about “St. Abilene.”

Thankfulness in country music can often be sarcastic, as in “Thanks A Lot,” or humorous, like “Thank God and Greyhound.” But with this month’s playlist we’re going to be serious, and check out some songs on which artists count their various blessings.

• 20. “Thank God For The Road” – The Flatlanders
  “When you’re trying to save your own soul/Thank God for the road.” Spoken like a group of true road warriors.
• 19. “Thank You For A Life” – Kris Kristofferson
  After the life he’s led, Kristofferson is probably thankful just to be alive at all.
• 18. “Lucky Stars” – JP McDermott & Western Bop
  DC’s red-hot rockabilly man JP McDermott tackles this Buddy Holly-meets-The-Mavericks song written by Western Bop guitarist Bob Newscaster.

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In Thursday’s News Roundup, Brody included a link to a Billboard feature on Taylor Swift’s new platinum edition release of her album Fearless, which hit stores on Monday.

The CD/DVD set will have a variety of new content, with six new songs and video extras including her video collaboration with T-Pain on “Thug Story” and exclusive new behind-the-scenes photos shot by Taylor’s brother, Austin K. Swift.

In the interview, Swift explains her reasoning for re-releasing the album, and in the official news release, Big Machine’s Scott Borchetta offered his take:

“Taylor’s fans have an incredible appetite for her new music and her ongoing life experiences. The two million-plus fans who bought Fearless within weeks of release last year are screaming for new Taylor music and Taylor has delivered,” says Scott Borchetta, President/CEO of the Big Machine Label Group. “There are six new songs, over fifty new photographs from the Fearless Tour 2009, a beautiful new collector cover, all of the videos from all of the hit singles and tons of new Taylor video footage. Taylor is all about engagement and staying engaged – the fans are going to love this.”

Commenters on the news roundup had mixed reactions to the new edition, including Sam:

Yes, Lucas, I stick with that even if the average fan is 12 years old. Even if the kid doesn’t know a “deluxe edition” is likely to come out in 8 months, there is hardly any significant trickery involved. (I imagine that even if many of these fans were told that a deluxe edition would come out in eight months, they would buy the initial edition the week of its release, anyhow, and still buy the deluxe one later).

Products of all sorts are updated from time to time, and even though some buyers may be unaware of said updates, this hardly seems like a deceitful practice to me. The product is put on the shelf, it is priced, and if the consumer gets what he or she thought he was getting, I just don’t see any trickery. Maybe there would be some if the label said, “We absolutely promise that we won’t release a deluxe edition next Christmas, so there’s no need to wait to purchase” and then it did release such an edition. But otherwise, I don’t see any significant trickery.

I don’t think its “trickery” for Craig Morgan to rerelease his current CD with the “Bonfire” track either, nor do I think its trickery for a group to release a version of a CD with “exclusive bonus content” to one retailer only.

I can understand that some fans may not like the practice. They may want to own “everything” that Swift releases and be a bit peeved because, to own “everything” they essentially have to buy what is almost the same product two times. But if they do decide to buy twice, I don’t think they have been tricked.

Of course, this practice certainly isn’t unique to Swift. What do you think about album re-releases that, as Sam puts it, essentially require you to buy the same product twice in order to own new music by the artist? Which artists’ re-releases have you bought (or considered buying) to get your hands on bonus tracks? Was it worth it, or did you feel manipulated?

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re too old for trick or treating. But you can still get in the Halloween spirit by listening to this fun-sized playlist.

• 5. “The Day Before Halloween” – Casey Driessen
  Casey Driessen sure can coax some spooky sounds out of his five-string fiddle. On his 2009 album Oog, this song immediately follows similarly eerie “Conversation With Death.”
• 4. “Undead Blues” – Unknown Hinson
  Self-proclaimed King of the Country & Western Troubadours “made out with a vampire gal” and ended up in his current predicament which includes an allergy to sunlight and a penchant for drinking a certain fluid.

• 3. “I Kept Her Heart” – Pine Box Boys
  If you’re a fan of Hank III and similar acts, you really should be listening to these California murdergrassers. The feller in this song holds his wife’s heart in the palm of his hand…literally. Creeeeeepy.

• 2. “Keep Them Cold, Icy Fingers Off Of Me” – Pee Wee King
  Bill Jackson is something else. He doesn’t mind your naked bones, your hollers or your moans, but icy fingers? That’s a dealbreaker. Also check out versions from Homer & Jethro and the Stanley Brothers.

• 1. “Vampira” – Bobby Bare
  Bobby Bare is to Vampira as Tyler Dean is to Taylor Swift. Only, you know, better.
  He pays tribute to television’s campy, marvelous horror host (played by Maila Nurmi) with this 1958 scream-filled rock & roll number. Unpleasant dreams, darlings.

With the recent release of her digital EP (Right Road Now) and a 2010 album on the horizon, Warner Bros. up-and-comer Whitney Duncan’s future is looking at bright as her buoyant personality. The 9513 has teamed up with Whitney and her team to help celebrate the release of the singer’s current single “Skinny Dippin’” by offering an awesome prize pack valued at approximately $100.

“Country music was always her first love. She begged to go to the famed Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in downtown Nashville and managed to get up on stage and play when she was barely a teenager. She began traveling to and from Nashville from her home in Scotts Hill, Tennessee, in high school, writing with some of Nashville’s best writers. By her senior year, she had landed a record deal. Almost immediately, Duncan landed a duet with country legend Kenny Rogers, but the first big record release still eluded her. In the meantime, she’d write and co-write cuts for Lee Ann Womack, Katie Arminger and Crystal Shawanda.” (Read The 9513’s exclusive interview with Whitney.)

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Nashville, we have one brand new iPod Shuffle to give away via Twitter. You have until 11:59 PM EST on Friday, October 30th, to enter. Just follow The 9513 on twitter and re-tweet the following message:

@The9513 We have a new iPod Shuffle courtesy of @whitneyduncan, RT for a chance to win! #wdfree

Whitney Duncan Prize Pack

We also have one prize pack, including the following:

- iPod Shuffle (2 GB) pre-loaded with Whitney Duncan’s Right Road Now
- Signed Whitney Duncan CD/DVD Sampler
- Signed Whitney Duncan Poster
- Whitney Duncan Cardboard Standout

Entering The Prize Pack Giveaway

Entering is easy–just leave any comment to this post answering the following question: Have you ever been skinny dipping? If so, tell us the story. If not, do you have a great skinny dipping story you heard from a friend? All comments that somehow mention skinny dipping will be entered to win. (Please keep comments PG-13.)

You must use a valid email address when you enter so that we can contact you if you win. The9513.com will never share your private information without your explicit consent.

Eligible comments must be posted by 11:59 pm EST on Tuesday, November 3rd. The winner will be chosen randomly and announced after the contest has ended.

For more information on Whitney Duncan, visit her official website

• Noble Things, a movie featuring Lee Ann Womack and Tracy Byrd in their big screen debuts, opens in a limited number of theaters today. Read Pierce Greenberg’s review of the film.
• Watch the video premiere of Blake Shelton’s “Hillbilly Bone” featuring Trace Adkins.
• Ralph Emery has been on radio and television for the past 58 years and he thinks each year will be his last, but he suspects this year might really be the last.
• Taylor Swift is not a Nazi.
• Remember when Tracy Lawrence was hospitalized and diagnosed with pneumonia a couple of months ago? In a recent interview with The Norman Transcript he revealed that he also contracted the H1N1 virus and combined with his asthma he was hit pretty hard, knocking him out of commission for five or six weeks. (via GAC)
• Country Universe’s Kevin J. Coyne continued his worst singles of the decade countdown with part three.
• Chet Flippo argues that country music runs in cycles that last roughly a decade, possibly even 8.6 years, and thus there will not be another Taylor Swift.
• Tim McGraw has no faith in his friends:
  

  “I don’t really look at names when I’m looking at songs,” Tim tells GAC, “because I’m scared if I pay attention to who wrote the song, or I see a friend’s name, that two things will happen: When I see a friend’s name, either I won’t think it’s any good because they’re my friend, or I’ll cut it just because they’re my friend.”

• Allison Moorer’s new album, Crows, is slated for a Feb. 9, 2010 release.
• Kitty Wells and Johnny Wright celebrate their 72nd wedding anniversary today.
• The third song, “Undo It,” leading up to next week’s release of Carrie Underwood’s album Play On was released a few days ago. (iTunes)
• The Austin Chronicle’s Margaret Moser published a lengthy profile on Augie Meyers and relayed the stories behind three of his songs. And in another article, Doug Freeman reviewed Meyers’ latest album, Country.
• Watch Gene Watson’s new video, featuring Rhonda Vincent, for “Staying Together.”

At 57, Sam Bush is only getting better with age. With Circles Around Me, he combines old and new sounds in an irresistible blend that ranks among some of his best solo work to date. Though he’s sharply dressed in a suit on the album cover (a far cry from earlier album covers like Glamour & Grits on which he sports an outfit befitting a colorblind transient–albeit one who owned a prewar Gibson F-5)–several songs recall his scruffy days as a member of the boundary-pushing New Grass Revival.

Bush actually gets a hand on instrumental “Apple Blossom” from New Grass Revival bandmate Courtney Johnson (banjo). The thing is, Johnson’s been dead for thirteen years. This 90-second song is from 1976 and previously unreleased; for NGR fans, it’s a treat to hear Bush and Johnson play together again, no matter how briefly.

“Souvenir Bottles,” originally from the New Grass Revival’s 1979 album Barren County is so depressing that listeners might want to spin “Whiskey Lullaby” afterwards as a pick-me-up, because lyrics don’t get much sadder than “He had been a road musician playing banjo with the band/He had a lot of souvenirs of a lot of one night stands/And they all were whiskey bottles/Plain glass and cheap/He poured his life out years ago and saved the memories,” especially when they’re sung by Bush’s warm, weathered voice. NGR’s “Whisper My Name,” the album’s hard driving closer, segues into a hidden track: the buoyant cover “They’re Red Hot” is one of the record’s most pleasant surprises, although invoking Robert Johnson raises a few questions, namely whether Bush made a similar Faustian bargain at a crossroads one night. Could there be any other explanation for such fine musicianship?

When you’re Sam Bush, you have the luxury of getting some mighty fine musicians to play on your record. His band, Byron House on bass, drummer Chris Brown, banjo picker Scott Vestal, and guitarist Stephen Mougin (Bush serves double duty with both mandolin and fiddle) work together like a well-oiled machine, and there are some big name guest stars who seamlessly fit in with Bush and the boys too. Most notably, Del McCoury shows up to sing on a pair of songs that were also recorded by his old boss, Bill Monroe; “Roll On, Buddy, Roll On” is one of the more traditional bluegrass numbers on the album, and the Bush and McCoury one-two vocal punch will likely make for happy fans.

Dobro whiz Jerry Douglas and Edgar Meyer join Bush on “Junior Heywood,” six minutes of auditory bliss bolstered by Meyer’s bowed bass. Come to think of it, Circles Around Me is something of a family affair for Meyer, as son George and wife Cornelia Heard contribute twin violins to somber instrumental “The Old North Woods,” a song seemingly made for this time of year as the colors of autumn slowly transform into grey winter.

There’s not a bum track on this album, but if there’s one that especially stands out, it’s “The Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle.” Co-written with Guy Clark and Verlon Thompson, it’s the story of Hee-Haw musician/comedian David “Stringbean” Akeman and his wife, who were murdered by two men looking for Akeman’s rumored cash cache (they didn’t find much); he and Estelle were found the next day by Grandpa Jones. “It was just a simple plan/To rob a banjo man/But he wouldn’t let go of his Opry pay,” Bush sings, and the senselessness of the crime is further compounded when a stanza reveals that two decades later, $20,000 was found stashed in the Akemans’ fireplace, too rotted to be of any worth.

Bluegrass, newgrass, call it whatever you want. Circles Around Me is damn good music no matter what it’s classified as.